’28 Years Later’ Receives Positive Reviews, Fiennes’ Performance ‘Scene-Stealing’

Critics have at last weighed in on Alex Garland and Danny Boyle’s new zombie horror movie 28 Years Later ahead of its release in UK cinemas on Friday, 20 June. 

A follow-up to the ‘great’ 2002 film 28 Days Later, Boyle and Garland assembled a star-studded cast including Harry Potter star Ralph Fiennes, 62, and fellow Brit Aaron Taylor-Johnson, for their latest endeavour. 

Two decades on from the original which saw a deadly virus plague London, the new movie finds a group of survivors living on the secluded island of Lindisfarne, where the virus is yet to reach. 

Boyle and Garland’s new project has received largely positive, if sometimes mixed, reviews from critics following early screenings. 

Rotten Tomatoes have handed the movie an impressive 94 percent critic approval rating after rounding up reviews from more than 91 film reviewers. 

Critics have at last weighed in on Alex Garland and Danny Boyle ‘s new zombie horror movie 28 Years Later ahead of its release in UK cinemas on Friday 20 June

23 years on from the original which saw a deadly virus plague London, the new movie finds a group of survivors living on the secluded island of Lindisfarne, where the virus is yet to reach (Pictured: Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Jamie and Alfie Williams as Spike)

Robbie Collin in The Telegraph also handed 28 Years Later a rave review, with the critic handing the ‘terrifying’ horror movie five stars out of five. 

‘Garland employs a strain of peculiarly British pulp humour – very 2000 AD, very Warhammer 40,000 – to undercut the ambient dread,’ Collin wrote. 

‘And flashes of Arthurian fantasias and wartime newsreel footage (as well as  a pointed double cameo for the now-felled Sycamore Gap tree_ serve as regularly nudges in the ribs as he and Boyle ty with the notion of a 21st century British national myth.’

The film too received five stars from The Times critic Ed Potton, who hailed Jodie Comer’s ‘impressive as always’ performance. 

The journalist wrote: ‘Is this the most beautiful zombie film of them all? It’s hard to think of another that combines such wonder and outlandishness with the regulation flesh-rending, brain-munching and vicious disembowelment.’ 

The BBC‘s Caryn James handed the highly-anticipated film four stars out of five as she dubbed Ralph Fiennes’s performance ‘scene-stealing’.

’28 Years Later is part zombie-apocalypse horror, part medieval world buildling, part sentimental family story and – most effectively – part Heart of Darkness in its journey towards a madman in the woods. 

Ralph Fiennes stars in the movie as Dr. Kelson, with critics praising the actor’s ‘scene-stealing’ performance

The BBC’s Caryn James handed the highly-anticipated film four stars out of five as she dubbed Ralph Fiennes’s performance ‘scene-stealing’

Spike (left) – played by Alfie Williams who has been dubbed a ‘gem’ by critics – is a 12-year-old boy whose mother Isla (Jodie Comer) is unwell, confused and depressed

‘It glows with Boyle’s visual flair, Garland’s ambitious screenplay and a towering performance from Ralph Fiennes, whose character enters halfway through the film and unexpectedly becomes its fraught sole’.

Reviews in The Guardian and The Independent were slightly more critical however, with journalists scoring 28 Years Later with three stars. 

Peter Bradshaw wrote in The Guardian: ‘A little awkwardly, the film has to get us on to the mainland for some badass action sequences with real shooting weaponry – and then we have the two ‘alpha’ cameos that it would be unsporting to reveal, but which cause the film to shunt between deep sadness and a bizarre, implausible (though certainly startling) graphic-novel strangeness.’

While Clarisse Loughley wrote in The Independent: ‘Even if 28 Years Later feels like being repeatedly bonked on the head by the metaphor hammer, Boyle’s still a largely compelling filmmaker, and the film separates itself from the first instalment by offering something distinctly more sentimental and mythic than before.’

28 Years Later has become the best horror ticket pre-seller of 2025, with the film expected to gross around $30million in its first weekend.